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Sun, 02 Aug 2015 22:00:00 +0000enhourly1No mourning, no peace: Sam DuBose, Sandra Bland and why Black lives don’t matter (yet)http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/no_mourning_no_peace_sam_dubose_sandra_bland_and_why_black_lives_dont_matter_yet/
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/no_mourning_no_peace_sam_dubose_sandra_bland_and_why_black_lives_dont_matter_yet/#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 22:59:00 +0000Erin Keanehttp://www.salon.com/?p=14030237There are many bad things that come along with losing your mother to metastatic breast cancer when you're 15 years old. For me, one of the worst parts was being told by my father, a few weeks after her passing in July 2000, that I would have to start back at school soon—a new school, no less. This was one more part of death, in addition to the part where I had to watch the strongest woman I knew become, physically, little more than flesh and bones; that didn’t make any sense to me. Why wasn't there some kind of rule in place that allowed me to start school later... much later, preferably? Why didn't I have more time to mourn, before I had to get back to the real world?

It’s true that, if it'd been up to teenage me, I probably never would have started sophomore year. And it's difficult to determine how much time is "enough" time to mourn a person, a body. But there's something vile—violent even—in telling a person that their time to mourn is up. Or worse, there’s something violent in telling a person or a community that their time is up because there is a new body to mourn. Before we find out what happened to Sandra Bland (and I need to believe that we will), there will be a new victim of police brutality to mourn. In fact, many of us are already hashtagging a new name this week: Sam DuBose.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/07/30/no_mourning_no_peace_sam_dubose_sandra_bland_and_why_black_lives_dont_matter_yet/feed/0Prejudice makes us see innocent people as threats, study says: “We have to be more open to admitting we are biased”http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/prejudice_makes_us_see_innocent_people_as_threats_study_says_we_have_to_be_more_open_to_admitting_we_are_biased/
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/prejudice_makes_us_see_innocent_people_as_threats_study_says_we_have_to_be_more_open_to_admitting_we_are_biased/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 23:00:00 +0000STimberghttp://www.salon.com/?p=14027660The police killings of unarmed black men like Eric Garner, Michael Brown and, most recently, Sam Dubose at a July 19 traffic stop at the University of Cincinnati, have enraged many and baffled more. Why did Cleveland police shoot and kill 12-year-old Tamir Rice last year? How did self-styled block watch patrolman George Zimmerman decide to shoot and kill teenager Trayvon Martin, who was armed with nothing but a bag of candy on that night in 2012? These outrages have caused demonstrations, urban unrest, more violence and a larger sense that something has gone wrong in the nation's race relations.

Besides outright racism, what motivates the overreaction of law-enforcement and vigilantes who have left these men dead?

A social psychologist at Wellesley College who studies diversity and friendship, Angela Bahns, has recently completed research that helps to explain part of the puzzle: It shows that people can imagine a sense of threat -- a threat serious enough to justify violence -- even with no real evidence besides their own stereotypes. And the stereotypes, the research suggests, are the root causes of the violence.

We spoke to Bahns from her Massachusetts campus. The interview has been condensed and slightly edited.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/07/27/prejudice_makes_us_see_innocent_people_as_threats_study_says_we_have_to_be_more_open_to_admitting_we_are_biased/feed/0Sandra Bland is dead: It is time to erase the “All Lives Matter” mantrahttp://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/sandra_bland_is_dead_it_is_time_to_erase_the_%e2%80%9call_lives_matter%e2%80%9d_mantra/
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/sandra_bland_is_dead_it_is_time_to_erase_the_%e2%80%9call_lives_matter%e2%80%9d_mantra/#commentsFri, 24 Jul 2015 16:05:00 +0000davedaleyhttp://www.salon.com/?p=14025847Sandra Bland, a young, black woman on her way from Chicago to a new job in Prairie View Texas is dead by hanging, and we believe it was murder. If not murder in her jail cell, a murder that began at the site of her questionable arrest by a cop who pulled her over on a long stretch of Texas highway.

Sandra Bland is dead, yet again, I see the mantra “All Lives Matter” as a retort to the new civil rights’ movement hashtag, “Black Lives Matter.” It is a mantra of those who Ta-Nehisi Coates dubs in his book Between the World and Me, the “dreamers.” These dreamers hold fast to the false perception in America that all people are viewed and treated with the same humanity. It’s the mantra of those who sit comfortably with dreamy notions that the state and its watchmen, because they are hired to protect, do so fairly and with the utmost integrity. It is to believe in a God that only demands acquiescence to His authority, and by extension, the authority of the state, despite reading in the holy text that we are all created in his image, an image that through both his word and his wrath creates and destroys. It is a mantra used by the missionary who loves to give charity abroad to the poor brown and black natives, victims of their own states’ abuses, while she simultaneously condemns her own black and brown countrymen and women. She blames Rekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, Megan Hockaday and Eric Garner for their own deaths. In her imagination, Blacks are the scourge of America.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/sandra_bland_is_dead_it_is_time_to_erase_the_%e2%80%9call_lives_matter%e2%80%9d_mantra/feed/96“Young black men are human beings”: This murdered black teen’s parents have a message for Americahttp://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/young_black_men_are_human_beings_this_murdered_black_teens_parents_have_a_message_for_america/
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/young_black_men_are_human_beings_this_murdered_black_teens_parents_have_a_message_for_america/#commentsThu, 18 Jun 2015 23:00:00 +0000Andrew O'Hehirhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13996088Lucia McBath says she has forgiven the man who shot and killed her son, Jordan Davis, at a Florida gas station on the day after Thanksgiving in 2012. She says it is an important aspect of her faith as a Christian and her ability, as a human being, to endure what happened and keep going. Jordan’s father, Ron Davis, does not feel quite the same way, and I can’t imagine that I would either. Like any other parent, I hope and pray that I will never have to find out, but beyond that there are aspects of McBath and Davis’ experience that I will never know about firsthand.

Their son Jordan was a young black male, a 17-year-old kid who was out being rambunctious with three of his friends, who were also black. They were looking to meet girls and had stopped at the gas station to buy gum, so their breath would be fresh. They were playing hip-hop music loud in their Dodge Durango and got into a verbal altercation with Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man who had consumed several rum-and-Cokes that day at a family wedding. (To be specific, it was the wedding of an adult son Dunn had not seen for years, a detail that ought to be irrelevant but isn’t.) Dunn had a loaded handgun in his glove compartment, and as the confrontation escalated he took it out and fired into the Durango 10 times. It’s almost miraculous that Jordan Davis was the only person hit.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/young_black_men_are_human_beings_this_murdered_black_teens_parents_have_a_message_for_america/feed/0Black America is so very tired of explaining and debatinghttp://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/black_america_is_so_very_tired_of_explaining_and_debating/
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/black_america_is_so_very_tired_of_explaining_and_debating/#commentsMon, 08 Jun 2015 23:00:00 +0000davedaleyhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13986541Black America is tired. The liminal existence of Ellison’s invisible man; Cornel West’s brilliant meditation on “niggerization” as a state of existential fear, where black and brown people are unwanted, unprotected and unsafe in America; and the genius insights of Richard Wright's "Native Son" speak to a stalwart resilience in the face of the racial absurdity that is white supremacy and the color line in America (and the world).

Black Americans are the moral conscience of the United States. In her book by the same title, political theorist and legal scholar Lani Guinier described black folks as a type of “miner’s canary” for a democracy that is still very much a work in progress: a country whose origins are in the twin crimes against humanity that were the genocide of First Nations people and the murder and enslavement of millions of blacks held as human chattel, and one that still struggles to perfect a “more perfect union” in the face of a resurgent White Right, a plundering plutocrat class and the terror of neoliberalism and the politics of human disposability.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/black_america_is_so_very_tired_of_explaining_and_debating/feed/176George Zimmerman shot and injured in armed confrontationhttp://www.salon.com/2015/05/11/george_zimmerman_shot_and_injured_in_armed_confrontation/
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/11/george_zimmerman_shot_and_injured_in_armed_confrontation/#commentsMon, 11 May 2015 18:24:00 +0000Jenny Kutnerhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13961879George Zimmerman might be in trouble with the law yet again. Law enforcement officials confirmed on Monday that Zimmerman was involved in "a shooting incident" in Lake Mary, Florida, according to WESH.

Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell said two men were involved in a shooting on Lake Mary Boulevard, which left Zimmerman with a minor gunshot wound. According to one witness, Zimmerman pulled his truck over, got out and walked himself to an ambulance. A bullet hole was reportedly visible on the passenger side of his car as it was towed.

Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2013, and was subsequently arrested twice for domestic violence. In January, he was arrested for aggravated assault with a weapon for attacking his girlfriend, who later recanted her story. Charges were never filed. State law still allows Zimmerman to maintain gun ownership.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/05/11/george_zimmerman_shot_and_injured_in_armed_confrontation/feed/294Blood money, killer cops: How privatization is funding the racist logic of America’s policehttp://www.salon.com/2015/04/15/blood_money_killer_cops_how_privatization_is_funding_the_racist_logic_of_americas_police/
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/15/blood_money_killer_cops_how_privatization_is_funding_the_racist_logic_of_americas_police/#commentsWed, 15 Apr 2015 16:15:00 +0000Peter Finocchiarohttp://www.salon.com/?p=13937106On April 2 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a sheriff's deputy named Robert Bates shot and killed Eric Harris, a man fleeing a crime scene where he was about to be captured for selling illegal weapons. Bates, a reserve deputy who is allowed to work on cases because he is a big donor to the sheriff's office, was charged this week with second-degree manslaughter, after claiming that he meant to reach for a taser and not a gun.

As Harris lay struggling and dying, he told the surrounding officers, “I’m losing my breath.” One officer yelled back at him, “Fuck your breath!” Then he insisted that the dying man be handcuffed.

“Fuck your breath!” encapsulates in only three words the systemic disregard that police regularly show to Black people in America. Just last week, we watched Michael Slager execute Walter Scott in South Carolina for daring to run away. Now this week, we are also tuning into the trial of former Chicago Police Officer Dante Servin, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter in the killing of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in March 2012. In the cases of Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in South Carolina, and Eric Harris in Tulsa, we have seen video of law enforcement officers not only critically injuring citizens but also refusing to administer medical care, with fatal consequences.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/04/15/blood_money_killer_cops_how_privatization_is_funding_the_racist_logic_of_americas_police/feed/185George Zimmerman lashes out at “Barack Hussein Obama”: The president “broke the law” and “pitted American against American”http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/george_zimmerman_is_the_victim_according_to_george_zimmerman/
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/george_zimmerman_is_the_victim_according_to_george_zimmerman/#commentsTue, 24 Mar 2015 14:10:00 +0000Joanna Rothkopfhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13918711Brave George Zimmerman has made his first public comments since the Justice Department announced that it would not press charges against him for the death of Trayvon Martin in February 2012. In the video shot by his Tampa divorce lawyer, Zimmerman claimed that President Barack Obama, whom he refers to as "Barack Hussein Obama," had stoked racial tensions, and that he was the true victim.

"For him to make incendiary comments as he did and direct the Department of Justice to pursue a baseless prosecution, he by far over-stretched, over-reached," said Zimmerman, referring to Obama's comments that if he had a son, "he would look like Trayvon."

His lawyer, Howard Iken of Ayo and Iken PLC asked him a few questions:

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/george_zimmerman_is_the_victim_according_to_george_zimmerman/feed/117Eric Holder: It’s too hard to bring federal civil rights caseshttp://www.salon.com/2015/02/27/eric_holder_its_too_hard_to_bring_federal_civil_rights_cases/
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/27/eric_holder_its_too_hard_to_bring_federal_civil_rights_cases/#commentsFri, 27 Feb 2015 14:22:00 +0000Luke Brinkerhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13897231Three days after the Justice Department confirmed that it would not bring civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and with the department expected in the coming days to announce no charges in the killing of Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown, departing Attorney General Eric Holder suggested in a new interview that it's time to consider a new "standard of proof" for handing down civil rights charges.

Speaking with Politico's Mike Allen, Holder touted his department's record number of civil rights cases against police departments, but he hinted at dissatisfaction with the hurdles Justice must clear before intervening.

"I think some serious consideration needs to be given to the standard of proof that has to be met before federal involvement is appropriate, and that’s something that I am going to be talking about before — before I leave office," Holder told Allen.

It was 1969 and 1973, both times in early fall, when I first saw your small bodies, rose and tan, and fell in love for the second and third time with a black body, as it is named, for my first love was for your father. Always a word lover, I loved his words, trustworthy, often not expansive, sometimes even sparse, but always reliable and clear. How I -- a first-generation Russian-Jewish girl -- loved clarity! Reliable words -- true words, measured words, filled with fascinating new life stories, drawing me down and in. The second and third times I fell in love with black bodies I became a black body, not Black, but black in a way I’d say without shame and some humor, for mine is dark tan called white. But I am the carrier, I am the body who carried them, released on a river of blood.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2015/02/20/what_color_am_i_mommy_partner/feed/8Thomas Frank: Ann Coulter and David Brooks play a sneaky, unserious class cardhttp://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/thomas_frank_ann_coulter_and_david_brooks_play_a_sneaky_unserious_class_card/
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/thomas_frank_ann_coulter_and_david_brooks_play_a_sneaky_unserious_class_card/#commentsSun, 07 Dec 2014 12:00:00 +0000davedaleyhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13838733A few days ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks took the occasion of the outrage in Ferguson, Missouri, to call for a national effort to combat “classism,” an unfortunate form of prejudice that, he says, results from widening inequality. Nowadays, Brooks asserted, “classism intertwines with racism” to produce a truly monstrous complex of attitudes toward the people at society’s bottom.

If you are a newcomer to the culture-war labyrinth, you might be surprised to hear a leading conservative deplore “classism,” because it’s the right’s beloved free-market system that has opened the yawning crevasse between the classes—between the people who work and the people who own. But in truth class grievance is central to the cosmology of modern conservatism. They love nothing more than to denounce snobbery—just as long as they are able to attribute that vice to scholarly liberal weaklings who disdain the plainspoken ways of middle America. David Brooks himself wrote one of the best-known iterations of this stereotype, back in the days when people were just beginning to associate red states with proletarian authenticity and blue states with upper-class pretension. (And back in October, he argued against the scourge of "partyism".)

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/12/07/thomas_frank_ann_coulter_and_david_brooks_play_a_sneaky_unserious_class_card/feed/214Black poverty is state violence, too: Why struggles for criminal justice and living wage are unitinghttp://www.salon.com/2014/12/05/black_poverty_is_state_violence_too_why_struggles_for_criminal_justice_and_living_wage_are_uniting/
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/05/black_poverty_is_state_violence_too_why_struggles_for_criminal_justice_and_living_wage_are_uniting/#commentsFri, 05 Dec 2014 20:16:00 +0000bzeffhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13837789For the second time in a week, the swelling protests against police brutality and an unequal criminal justice system coincided with planned labor strikes at low-wage employers yesterday, and for the second time, protesters joined forces, combining the struggle for a living wage with the struggle for the right to live free of police violence.

“Today felt different because we were doing it for the Mike Brown situation and trying to show people the significance between injustice in our workplaces and injustice in our communities,” says St. Louis Burger King worker Carlos Robinson, who has been organizing for $15 an hour and a union for about seven months. “It's a bigger difference when you're doing it for more than one reason but for the same cause.”

Convenience store workers, airport workers, and home care workers joined the actions calling for $15 an hour and a union, broadening the movement still more, but what really gave Thursday its kick was the connection to the emotions (and tactics) of Ferguson activists and their nationwide supporters.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/12/05/black_poverty_is_state_violence_too_why_struggles_for_criminal_justice_and_living_wage_are_uniting/feed/73White America’s scary delusion: Why its sense of black humanity is so skewedhttp://www.salon.com/2014/12/03/white_americas_scary_delusion_why_violence_is_at_the_core_of_whiteness/
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/03/white_americas_scary_delusion_why_violence_is_at_the_core_of_whiteness/#commentsWed, 03 Dec 2014 12:00:00 +0000bzeffhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13835215The failure of a St. Louis county grand jury to indict Darren Wilson, the former police officer who killed Michael Brown, created a maelstrom of protests last week. In more than 137 cities and on college campuses around the country, including Rutgers University where I teach, protesters walked out of classes, marched with signs, linked hands to stop traffic on interstate highways and train routes, staged a massive “die-in” to shut down the Galleria Mall in St. Louis, and chose to boycott Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping days of the year. On Sunday, five players for the St. Louis Rams entered the field with their hands up, a silent and peaceful protest in solidarity with Michael Brown’s final act as he attempted to save his own life.

These protests have been met at best with a kind of studied indifference and at worst with a kind of unrighteous indignation that truly baffles the mind. For instance, Black Friday sales dropped an estimated 11 percent from last year’s totals. While some decrease in revenue had been predicted, double-digit decreases were not. The New York Times coverage of the decline managed to not even consider the possibility that the massive, social media-driven boycott of Black Friday, through hashtags like #BlackoutBlackFriday and Rahiel Tesfamariam’s #NotOneCent, had contributed at all to the downward shift in sales.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/12/03/white_americas_scary_delusion_why_violence_is_at_the_core_of_whiteness/feed/491As a white mother, I fear for my black sonhttp://www.salon.com/2014/11/30/as_a_white_mother_i_fear_for_my_black_son/
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/30/as_a_white_mother_i_fear_for_my_black_son/#commentsSun, 30 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000Jacob Sugarmanhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13831008 Last night, as I was putting my 3-year-old son, Theo, to bed, I was distracted. As we cuddled, poring over the pages of his new favorite book, The Polar Express (a Christmas story, plus trains!), I was agonizing in anticipation after hours of deferrals and stalling by St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch, who would finally announce, with deliberate, incendiary words (blaming “unfounded rumors on social media” and the “24/7 news cycle”) and a voice so condescending it became nearly deafening, that the grand jury would not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown. The decision had already been made earlier that day, but was not disclosed until prime time—many of my friends and colleagues surmised that this was to take the focus off of Wilson and place it squarely on the rightfully enraged, grief-stricken Black community, who would likely take to the streets and protest. And be met once again with militarized police and teargas.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/11/30/as_a_white_mother_i_fear_for_my_black_son/feed/110America’s rough lesson about violence: What Cosby, Ferguson and Tamir Rice reveal about our culturehttp://www.salon.com/2014/11/24/americas_rough_lesson_about_violence_what_cosby_ferguson_and_tamir_rice_reveal_about_our_culture/
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/24/americas_rough_lesson_about_violence_what_cosby_ferguson_and_tamir_rice_reveal_about_our_culture/#commentsMon, 24 Nov 2014 21:08:00 +0000kmcdonoughhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13829105When an onlooker saw Tamir Rice holding what appeared to be a pistol at a Cleveland playground, he called the police. He told the dispatcher, “I’m sitting in the park … there’s a guy here with a pistol, and it’s probably a fake one, but he’s pointing it at everybody.”

The caller was right that it was “probably a fake one.” Rice was holding a BB gun. But he was wrong about something else. Rice wasn’t a “guy,” he was a 12-year-old boy. He was a child when police shot and killed him on Saturday afternoon.

Rice was killed two days after police shot and killed Akai Gurley, who was walking down a darkened set of stairs in the Brooklyn building where he lived when he an encountered an officer who had his gun inexplicably drawn.

Gurley was killed as crowds continued to gather in Ferguson, waiting to hear if a grand jury would compel a white police officer to stand trial for killing Mike Brown, who was unarmed and shot dead at 18 years old.

Sundance Film Festival breakout Dear White People is making waves in more ways than one. The feature-length debut of director Justin Simien bowed with a strong opening in limited release last week and hopes to pick up steam as it begins its rollout in wider release this weekend, boosted by a strong, eye-catching social media campaign that hopes to raise awareness about the film and get people talking about the issues it addresses. One Funny or Die-esque clip to promote the movie posits “racism insurance” for white people after a seemingly pleasant conversation about Game of Thrones goes very wrong.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/28/5_reasons_everyone_needs_to_see_dear_white_people_partner/feed/31Michael Dunn sentenced to life plus 105 years in racially charged killinghttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/michael_dunn_sentenced_to_life_plus_105_years_in_racially_charged_killing/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/michael_dunn_sentenced_to_life_plus_105_years_in_racially_charged_killing/#commentsFri, 17 Oct 2014 17:26:00 +0000Luke Brinkerhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13798999Michael Dunn was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for his first-degree murder conviction in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed African-American teen Jordan Davis. Dunn received an additional 90-year sentence for three attempted murder convictions and a 15-year sentence for firing his gun into a vehicle. Dunn was convicted of the latter four counts in February, when the jury failed to reach a verdict on the first-degree murder charge. After a retrial, a separate jury convicted Dunn on that count this month.

While Dunn and his girlfriend were stopped at a Jacksonville, Florida, convenience station on Nov. 23, 2012, Dunn asked Davis and three friends to turn down the music in their car. During Dunn’s first trial, his girlfriend testified that Dunn had told her, “I hate that thug music.” An argument broke out between Dunn and Davis and his friends, and even though Davis was unarmed, Dunn asserted that the 17-year-old threatened to kill him. Dunn, who was carrying a concealed weapon, fired 10 rounds into Davis' vehicle, fatally wounding the teen.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/michael_dunn_sentenced_to_life_plus_105_years_in_racially_charged_killing/feed/44Stand whose ground? How a criminal loophole gives domestic abusers all the rightshttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/15/stand_whose_ground_how_a_criminal_loophole_gives_domestic_abusers_all_the_rights/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/15/stand_whose_ground_how_a_criminal_loophole_gives_domestic_abusers_all_the_rights/#commentsWed, 15 Oct 2014 20:41:00 +0000Jenny Kutnerhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13796956In November 2012, Whitlee Jones fatally stabbed her partner, Eric Lee. She has testified that she did not mean to kill Lee when she issued the fatal wound, but that she only meant to fend him off while he blocked her from exiting the house with her belongings, attempting to leave him for good. The incident occurred just hours after Lee had punched Jones repeatedly and dragged her down the street by her hair.

According to a lengthy report by the Charleston Post and Courier, neighbors saw Lee rip Jones' weave from her head, saw it fall to the pavement across which he yanked her while she screamed. One witness called the police. Officers arrived while Jones hid outside the house; they spoke only with Lee, who said that their altercation never turned physical. The police left, and Jones returned to grab her things and go, forever. She later told police that her partner tried to attack her while she was leaving the house for the second time that night. So, allegedly fearing for her life, she stabbed him.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/15/stand_whose_ground_how_a_criminal_loophole_gives_domestic_abusers_all_the_rights/feed/62“When that cop killed Michael Brown, and when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, they were killing Barack Obama”http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/when_that_cop_killed_michael_brown_and_when_george_zimmerman_killed_trayvon_martin_they_were_killing_barack_obama/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/when_that_cop_killed_michael_brown_and_when_george_zimmerman_killed_trayvon_martin_they_were_killing_barack_obama/#commentsSun, 12 Oct 2014 16:30:00 +0000davedaleyhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13786756Greil Marcus is a critic of music and culture who has helped redefine the job description. Known for his books like “Mystery Train,”“Lipstick Traces” and “The Old, Weird America” (on Dylan’s “Basement Tapes”), he’s forged a personal brand of criticism that blends traditional close reading with the styles of Leslie Fiedler and Pauline Kael, as well as deep, almost free-associative mediations on American history.

His new “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs” — as eccentric as any of his previous books — has drawn him more attention than anything he’s written in a decade. These songs — whether by Joy Division, The Flamin’ Groovies, Etta James — tell their stories through the context they summon around them.

Marcus can be a bit like Van Morrison, the subject of his book “When That Rough God Goes Riding”: sometimes portentous and devoid of humor, but often lyrical and sometimes transcendent. “The History” is Marcus at his best.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/when_that_cop_killed_michael_brown_and_when_george_zimmerman_killed_trayvon_martin_they_were_killing_barack_obama/feed/117Who is Thomas Perez? A look at the reported frontrunner to be the next attorney generalhttp://www.salon.com/2014/10/10/who_is_thomas_perez_a_look_at_the_reported_frontrunner_to_be_the_next_attorney_general/
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/10/who_is_thomas_perez_a_look_at_the_reported_frontrunner_to_be_the_next_attorney_general/#commentsFri, 10 Oct 2014 15:43:00 +0000Luke Brinkerhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13793289The New York Times reports this morning that Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez is the odds-on favorite to succeed outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, and that President Obama is “poised” to make the announcement before the midterm elections on Nov. 4.

The Times’ Carl Hulse writes that Perez’s selection isn’t final; U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York and former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler haven’t been ruled out. But, Hulse notes, a new Washington Post investigation into Ruemmler’s handling of a 2012 prostitution scandal allegedly involving a member of the White House staff has likely damaged Ruemmler’s chances.